Question

I have to check, if a class has been initialized ( if I already done: $a = new MyClass; ). How can I do this using PHP?

Thanks.

Answer 1

One way to do it is to let the class itself keep track of all its instances:

class MyClass {

    protected static $instances = array();

    public function __construct() {
        self::$instances[] = $this;
    }

    public static function countInstances() {
        return count(self::$instances);
    }

}

echo MyClass::countInstances();

(Take care to decrease the count/references when destroying instances, yadayada…)

You may also just want to keep better track of your variables so you don’t have to figure it out later, that depends on what your goals are with this.